The recollection of several of these, and other worthy citizens of Pittsburg, will always be accompanied with sentiments of my esteem.
The weather continuing clear, and without the least prospect of a flood, I have procured a skiff, and determined on proceeding down the river. The skiff is 15-1/2 feet long, 3-1/2 wide across the gunwale, and 14 inches deep. This is supposed to be sufficiently large for carrying myself and baggage, (about 800 lbs.) The sides are composed of two boards of pine, three quarters of an inch thick; the bottom flat, and of the same material. It is a light, {66} and certainly not a strong bark. My other equipments are, a copy of the Pittsburg Navigator, (a book recommended as useful, in pointing out the proper course for avoiding bars, and the points where rapids are to be entered;)[41] small quantities of bread, cheese, and dried deer; a small flask with spirits; and a tinned cup, to be used both in drinking water from the river, and in casting out bilge water. Over the after part of the skiff three hoops are fixed, in the form of an arch. A sheet stretched over these, will form a canopy under which I may sleep, by the margin of the river.
LETTER VI
Descend the Ohio from Pittsburg to Beaver—Occurrences
and remarks there
Atkinson's Tavern, by Beaver,
28th October, 1818.
As a great part of my notes since I last wrote, relate to rapids, bars, islands, &c. I shall omit the description of many of them, as being altogether uninteresting.
